1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to communications systems, and in particular, to conferencing systems for managing and controlling conference calls.
2. Description of Related Art
Conferencing systems provide a conference call service that enables three or more parties on different communications devices to participate in a single call. Traditionally, conferencing systems consisted of a private branch exchange (PBX) or local exchange carrier (LEC) that allowed a conference call originator to manually dial the other parties of the conference call, place them on “hold” and then patch them together by simultaneously releasing the holds.
More recently, conferencing bridge systems have been developed that utilize a conference bridge to combine multimedia communications from multiple communications devices for a multi-party call. The conference bridge may be located within a public or private network and may be implemented on a single (central conference bridge) switch or multiple switches. In conferencing bridge applications, a conference originator reserves a certain number of connections (i.e., ports) on a conference bridge by manually interacting with an operator of the conference bridge or by interacting with an automated conferencing bridge system. Once the conference originator has reserved the requisite number of ports on the bridge, the conference originator must provide each participant with a telephone number for the conference bridge and an access code for entering the conference call. To join the conference call, each participant must dial the telephone number for the conference bridge, and when prompted, enter the access code for the conference call.
Once the conference call has been established, the conference originator and/or participants to the conference call may want to add additional participants to the conference call or prevent external parties from disturbing or interrupting the conference call. However, current conferencing systems provide little or no control over external party access to the conference call itself or the individual conference call participants during the conference call.
For example, if a conference participant desires to add an external party to the conference call, the conference participant must dial the external party from the conference bridge, and if the external party does not answer, the conference participant must leave all of the conference bridge information (e.g., conference bridge number and access code) on the messaging system of the external party to enable the external party to call back into the conference call. Leaving such a message takes a considerable amount of time, thus producing an unwanted interruption of the meeting. In addition, if the conference bridge information changes or the conference call ends early, the external party may not be notified unless one of the conference participants remembers to leave the external party another voice message. Furthermore, the external party must first write down all of the conference bridge information and then enter the conference bridge information to join the conference call, thus delaying the external party's access to the conference call.
As another example, participants or the conference originator may not want to be disturbed during a particular meeting, and hence may not want to have calls coming into the physical meeting room communications devices or to their personal communications devices. Currently, in order to block incoming calls to each of these communications devices, the participants must separately activate a do not disturb (DND) or other similar feature (e.g., call forwarding to voice mail) on each individual communications device prior to the conference call, and then deactivate the DND feature on each individual communications device after the conference call. In addition, most DND features do not provide exceptions for authorized external parties, such as one of the participant's boss, assistant or spouse.
Therefore, what is needed is a conferencing system that enables conference participants to control external party access to an established conference call.